I have a Turing test in my answering message. It says, "You've reached (my name) and I'm delighted you called unless you're a telemarketer, survey taker, or soliciting for some cause or other. In that case, place us on your do-not-call list. Then hang up. If you're one of my friends or I'm otherwise expecting your call, press three to ring my phone."
First time callers always chuckle at the message and many have asked me if I can set that up for them. I tell them a buddy set it up for me and I have no idea how it works. I live in three different homes (two are mine, one is my lady's place), two different countries, and I have friends in another few towns, so I have numbers in all those places (about a buck a month each) that come into an asterisk box in the sky, they all get the same auto answer message and calls are shipped to my SPA2102s - first one to be answered gets the call.
I also have both Canadian and US cell phones (cheapest way of dealing with it) and they're cheap pay-as-you-go phones. I just give folks that deserve to have my cell number the secret code to enter instead of three on the opening message. That rings all my ATAs in case I actually am at home and it rings both cell phones - but only one is turned on, and I get the call.
There is some other stuff like ensuring no message gets left on a cell phone, so if there is no answer through this system it drops the cell attempt back to the asterisk box to take a voice mail.
I gave up on the government doing this for me, so I lead a relatively telemarketer-free life.
Apparently it took a few days for the porno story to come out because analysts are busy sorting it into three piles: goat, camel and really perverted.
How long will it be before someone publishes the "Illustrated Report on Pornography Seized in the Bin Laden Raid"? That's what happened forty years ago with the "Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography" which satirized the then common anti-pornography laws.
That must be embarrassing to guys who don't get much tail.
What happens if the tail number gets incremented by one or more during a flight? Is there a lot of good-natured ribbing?
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Where is RightHaven now that Canada needs them?
I have a Turing test in my answering message. It says, "You've reached (my name) and I'm delighted you called unless you're a telemarketer, survey taker, or soliciting for some cause or other. In that case, place us on your do-not-call list. Then hang up. If you're one of my friends or I'm otherwise expecting your call, press three to ring my phone."
First time callers always chuckle at the message and many have asked me if I can set that up for them. I tell them a buddy set it up for me and I have no idea how it works. I live in three different homes (two are mine, one is my lady's place), two different countries, and I have friends in another few towns, so I have numbers in all those places (about a buck a month each) that come into an asterisk box in the sky, they all get the same auto answer message and calls are shipped to my SPA2102s - first one to be answered gets the call.
I also have both Canadian and US cell phones (cheapest way of dealing with it) and they're cheap pay-as-you-go phones. I just give folks that deserve to have my cell number the secret code to enter instead of three on the opening message. That rings all my ATAs in case I actually am at home and it rings both cell phones - but only one is turned on, and I get the call.
There is some other stuff like ensuring no message gets left on a cell phone, so if there is no answer through this system it drops the cell attempt back to the asterisk box to take a voice mail.
I gave up on the government doing this for me, so I lead a relatively telemarketer-free life.
Don't you have to put the green markings around the edges? And thank you for mentioning the green marker. I haven't heard about it for a while now. ;)
Apparently it took a few days for the porno story to come out because analysts are busy sorting it into three piles: goat, camel and really perverted. How long will it be before someone publishes the "Illustrated Report on Pornography Seized in the Bin Laden Raid"? That's what happened forty years ago with the "Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography" which satirized the then common anti-pornography laws.
That must be embarrassing to guys who don't get much tail. What happens if the tail number gets incremented by one or more during a flight? Is there a lot of good-natured ribbing?